Reviews

“This book is the outcome of three miracles. First, the mother Dina Frydman, lived through the Holocaust, surviving an unbelievable all too true set of tragic experiences that wiped out her entire family: occupation, ghetto, work camp, slave labor, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen (in its final stage of total collapse and chaos). Miraculously, she came through with her goodness, honor and affirmation of life intact. This reflects those qualities.

Second miracle: for decades, in an incredible feat of memory, Dina relived and told her stories, recounting them with pitch perfect recollection, including a vivid gallery of portraits of friends, family, victims, persecutors, and with vital scenes of the kindness and cruelty of strangers, the love and incapacity of family, the support and saving help of friends.

Third miracle: Dina’s daughter, Tema Merback, absorbed these stories and reproduced them in this authentic, gripping, moving account. What the mother could not do – put her testimony in a book – the daughter has done and without losing any of the fire, or the suffering, or the heartbreak or the moments of relief and of despair. In the end, this book communicates an irrepressible, overflowing life force and decency and hope in the face of the most inhuman crimes ever.

As authentic, as compelling, as devastating as a survivor’s account written at first hand, this book snatches memory and life from the jaws of oblivion and gives them as a gift to its readers. This book was a mitzvah to write and a mitzvah to read.”

“Reading In the Face of Evil, brought to mind two aspects that couldn’t be more vivid. Simply, it is a period of time when there were no iPhones, nor iPads, or Facebook; the pronoun mostly used was “we and us”, as in family. Something that is missing in this current world of ours. Reading In the Face of Evil allowed me the honor to hear the voices of a family that stood the test of time. I could smell the odors described, hear the noises and yes, feel their pain. I recommend this book to every High School student, their parents and most importantly as a reminder for the State Department and Pentagon which deal with similar tyrannies.”

-Peter Kash is an international bestselling author, and has visited Dachau, Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto. He is currently completing his doctorate thesis in Jewish Education at the Azrieli School at Yeshiva University.

“I could not put this book down. Tema has a way of writing that is beautiful. Her way with words and describing the events that are taking place are vivid. Please read this important piece of history we will never forget. I can’t wait for her next book.”